In Tanzania like any other developing countries, local governments are regarded as key providers of public services to the people in various aspects such as education, health, water, infrastructure, financial transactions. The main objective of this study was to assess the factors that contribute to the poor performance of procurement functions in local government authorities. The specific objectives of this study were: to analyze the effect of internal control, staff capacity, and corruption on procurement performance of the local governments in Tanzania. Through a review of existing scholarly works, documents, records and reports, a conceptual frame work was developed. The findings and recommendations of this paper were made based on audit reports for the period of four consecutive years conducted by the National Audit Office (NAOT) and the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA). This study revealed that, Local Government Authorities (LGAs) procurement performance faces serious challenges pertaining to weak internal control, lack of staff capacity, and lack of integrity. The study recommended that the public procurement body (PSPTB) and regulatory body (PPRA) should put more efforts on capacity building and monitoring to the LGAs with inadequate compliance level in order to strengthen and improve their procurement performance. It was further recommended that the LGAs managements should continue strengthening their Procurement Management Units, Tender Boards, User Departments as well as Internal Audit Units in order to obtain value for money on the procurements made.
Keywords: Local Government, Poor performance, Procurement Functions
